DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a long time follower! Let’s get down to business, ‘cuz this is gonna be a wild ride.

Let’s start by saying this: I’m a closeted lesbian. When I was much younger and new to the internet, I joined a nerdy forum/chat site posing as a man, not because I wanted to catfish anyone but because it felt good. I was able to be my true “self” online, where no one would judge me and no one knew me. I made some friends who knew nothing about me and among those people, I started falling for one of my friends, a girl a bit younger than me.

I need to clarify that as a ground rule, I made it clear that I didn’t want to share a lot of my personal info to anyone under the pretense of Stranger Danger. In reality, I only did it so I could keep being myself without my “secret” following me to my real life.

But moving on. I befriended this girl by accident and by talking to her, I realize it was quite possible to fall for someone online just by talking to them. We never blatantly flirted or anything (mostly because I held back due to my secret) but I feel there was some sexual tension there.

We remained as friends for years to come, both following my rule of keeping real life details secret. We did end up sharing certain vague things like our location, job, etc. Nothing that would help anyone figure out who I am. And that’s about it. No real names no phone numbers, etc. Just…pen pals, so to speak.

Now here’s the wild part: when she got a new job at pet cafe, I had no idea what that was so I googled it to get an idea. I ended up finding the exact location she worked at by accident and, lo and behold, a profile of her on the website where you could meet the employees.

Except it wasn’t Her. It was Him.

It was shocking at first and I was in denial but I was also curious and confused. “His” profile, info, likes and dislikes and even schedule matched perfectly everything “she” had shared with me. When there was an event at this store and “she” would talk about it with me, the website would match almost word by word what “she” said.

So let me recap: I, a closet lesbian, fell for a closet gay boy.

I still love who He pretends to be, the person that I’ve talked to for years now. But every now and then I remind myself that this person doesn’t exist, it’s only in my head now. I’m not physically attracted to guys and it’s clear that he’s not attracted to girls either. This whole situation has got me messed up, I’m hung up in this fake relationship I was building and that is going nowhere. I never intended to create a real relationship with my friend either but I’d be lying if I didn’t fantasize about meeting “her” one day and coming clean and hope for the best. Now I can’t do that at all.

In all honesty, I’m not even sure what kind of advice I’d want or need. Do I need to look for therapy? Is this good for my mental health? I love my friend but it’s just very confusing talking to “her” now. I haven’t said anything about what I found out to respect “her” privacy so I don’t know if that’s making it worse.

Help me, I’m a mess!

Sincerely,

Casper the Really Friendly Ghost

P.S: I don’t mean any disrespect by using quotes when referring to my friend. I just don’t know how to refer to him/her since we’ve never discussed it.

DEAR CASPER THE REALLY FRIENDLY GHOST: This is hardly the first time that someone has fallen for somebody else on the Internet who turned out to be someone completely different, CRFG. Hell, it’s not even the first time that it’s come up in this column. People creating a false persona in order to explore or express themselves more freely is incredibly common. Hell, for a lot of folks in the LGBTQ community, it’s often the first time they’ve ever been in a position to actually explore and express their true selves.

And to be perfectly honest… that’s not a bad thing at all. There are a lot of times where you can feel bound up by your history, by the people who know you and the expectations they have… but that version of your self isn’t the real you. It’s your conforming to what others expect of you or want from you. But because it’s so easy to see that as being definitional — you’ve spent so long being told that’s who you are — the only way that it feels safe to explore is to become someone else.

Some folks find this outlet in theater. Some find it in RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. Some people try reinventing themselves when they go off to college. And some find it in the comforting anonymity of the Internet, where it’s easy to post up in a new community and invent an entirely new person. Having that level of separation — “this isn’t me, this is someone else” — can give you the confidence and freedom to try out different aspects of your personality, different potential selves and identities. And a lot of times, this is how people realize that who they are isn’t necessarily who they think they are… or who they’ve been told they are by others.

So in falsity, there is truth. A trace of the true self can exist in the false self… or it can be REVEALED by the false self.

I mean, this is exactly what you experienced: you created a false self in order to be more authentically who you are.

It sounds like that’s what your friend did as well.

But here’s the thing: you’re assuming that “he” is fake and that your relationship is false. And that’s not true. To start with: even if the facts aren’t real, the emotions behind them are. You and your friend have years of shared intimacy, caring and connection. That’s real. That happened. The connection you have had, the shared moments and stories… those aren’t any less true or any less valid or important just because some of the details were wrong or absent. You aren’t any less of friends because you and they didn’t share actual home addresses or real names.

(I mean, s--t, I’ve had friendships going on for more than 20 years with people I’ve only met in person for the first time within the last 5 years. This is a thing that happens.)

Just as importantly: their gender (and possibly their name) sounds like it was one of the only things they lied about. And frankly, there’s every possibility that they aren’t lying about those either. There’ve been plenty of trans folks who have created personas in order to experience and get comfortable with their gender, even if they haven’t transitioned in physical space yet. It’s not impossible that your friend has been doing just that.

But even if they are, in fact, a cis gay man, it certainly sounds like they weren’t lying or inventing the rest of it. After all, you weren’t; other than names and gender, it sounds like your online self wasn’t that different from your actual self. You may not have given what you assumed to be identifying information, but you weren’t inventing a life out of whole cloth. So why assume that your friend was doing things any differently? After all, they gave you enough information about their lives that you were able to track them down and find their… let’s call it alternate identity. That sounds a lot like they were doing much the same as you: hiding identifying info, but being real all the same.

So it doesn’t sound like your friendship was fake at all, just complicated. And hey, complicated is fine. Nor do I think you need therapy or that this is bad for your mental health. You care for them because of what you experienced together; the fact that they may not be a woman or into women doesn’t change that. It may take a little adjustment, but you would hardly be the first person to have a crush on a friend, nor would you be the first to need to adjust expectations of what you hope from the relationship.

(And really, you could end up in the same boat by finding out that you weren’t physically attracted to them if and when you met in person; that is a tale as old as time, let me tell you.)

So where do you go from here? Well… I think the best thing you could do is come clean. Not about finding them at work and knowing their “secret” (assuming that it’s not their truth), but about who you are. Tell them that you’ve reached a point where you feel like you need to be honest and this is awkward and embarrassing but you’re not the gender you’ve been posing as online and you trust them enough to tell them. You can explain why — you’re still closeted, you wanted to make it harder for people to find you, you were exploring your genuine self — and that while your gender wasn’t accurate, the rest was real and true.

And then… the ball’s in their court. Being honest and trusting them with this secret may be what gives them permission to share their truth with you. They may well be in the same situation you are; they want to be honest, but they feel like they can’t. Hell, they may have been as much of an internet sleuth as you have been and tell you that that they knew already.

But either way: telling them — without revealing that you’ve tracked them down — will, at the very least, be a weight off your shoulders. You can start to come to grips with the fact that while the details were different, this has been, and still is, a real relationship. The nature of it may be different than you’d hoped it might be some day… but it’s still real. And then you and they can start to get to know each other as old friends who’ve just met.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have a few hang ups around relationships that I’ve tried to work through, but haven’t made any headway on in years.

The big, number one thing at my core is that throughout my whole 20’s, I’ve learned more and more that there is nothing innately interesting or appealing about my personality. It’s just that I, as an individual, don’t hit any notes with anyone.

I write fiction, and every rejection for every story and novel is the same (and please don’t give a “hey, you wrote a novel, that’s an accomplishment” line. Tons of people write novels that never see the light of day): “not right at this time,” “not for me,” and so on. The big one that hit me was being told “there’s nothing really wrong, but nothing really right.” So I thought more about it, and considered how a good writer (even of fantasy and sci-fi) has life experiences that inform their voice as a writer and I was hit by the realization that I lack life experiences, most specifically, the one thing I’ve always felt horrible about: romantic relationships.

I’ve always felt terrible and insecure about being single in my 20s(late 20s now, which in my family is old for being single). Most happily married people I know got married young, and my family’s culture doesn’t really have a place for single guys. Eventually, everyone will have their own families and I’ll be phased out.

And so my thought about writing led me to think the reason I’m a bad writer is the same reason women aren’t interested in me: I have no distinct voice or personality. The rejections are the same: “not right for me” or “I didn’t feel a connection.” Hearing that once or several times isn’t necessarily a reflection on me, as you’ve written before. But hearing it 100% of the time in dating and in other parts of life means there is something to it. I am completely milquetoast both as a man and a writer.

And so, I went to grad school for creative writing, in the hopes that I would learn how to be an interesting writer, and therefore become an interesting person in the process, and then maybe someone would like me, because I “got it now.” And while I found that time valuable and instructive, and I worked my tail off to get better, I was met by the same thing. People didn’t resonate with me and my work. Before I graduated, I talked with a professor who I previously told about wanting the ability to resonate with a reader/audience which I always lacked, and they said that after all this time, I was still just “nothing wrong, but nothing right.”

And that just broke me in a way. I haven’t written any creative work since. I have made no attempt to meet women in that time. Because there’s nothing right about me, even if there is nothing wrong(which is false). The last time I went on a first date was years ago, and there was no second date because she didn’t feel a connection… the exact same way people feel about anything I’ve ever written. I only ever had one long-term relationship anyway, and that started as a fluke, and ended because I never truly believed that she could be in love with me despite her saying so.

The worst part of it, though, is this: I don’t have it in me to try anymore. Not for dating or writing. It just hurts too much. Every rejection I get brings with it the pain of every past rejection rolled into one. It’s a weight that steadily builds with each new rejection, and the only way to cast off that weight is by finding just one success.

But I feel that the next rejection is just going to beat me down so hard that I can’t try. And it spills over into other things, too. I can’t exercise consistently because I know that a fitter me is still the me who has an uninteresting personality that won’t be wanted, just less fat.

But the loneliness hurts too, and I want the loneliness to end just as much as I want my personality to stop being so useless.

I know this is a long ramble, but the point is this: how do I fix something so fundamental about myself like my personality? Because my lack of individuality and subjective appeal is what keeps dragging me down. And it can’t just be my self-perception, because everything I’ve ever read about internal validation just sets off my red flag detector for being mental gymnastics or magical thinking. Even after reading all about negativity bias and confirmation bias, I still feel this, so maybe there’s something I don’t fully understand about internal validation.

– Can’t Be a Late Bloomer When There’s Nothing to Bloom

DEAR CAN’T BE A LATE BLOOMER: So, there’re a few things here, CLB… starting with no, finishing a novel at all is a hell of a feat. The world is littered with the ghosts of manuscripts that peter out before they even get to NANOWRIMO length, never mind the length of your average lit-fic or genre novel. Going out for publication is even more so. And as someone who’s been on the Query-Go-Round, who’s dealt with publishers and producers and who’s been fortunate enough to become friends with a number of successful authors… a lot of rejections have less to do with the quality of the writing and everything to do with the marketability. After all, there’re a lot of s—tty books out there that get by on prestige or notoriety rather than the actual quality of the writing.

(Also, I don’t think you realize just how large the “number of submissions to first time published” ratio is…)

Now the reason I start there is because of how much some of these misconceptions translate to issues with dating as well. The fact that rejection is often about marketability rather than quality is an issue that is often reflected in people’s dating lives. One of the issues that comes up often — including in this column — is how often people don’t know how to market themselves when it comes to dating. This tends to cover everything from presentation to crafting a good dating profile, from making sure you’re looking for the right people to date to simply not constantly talking yourself down.

Someone not vibing with your writing or you as a potential partner doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. I’ve read a lot of books where my dislike has ranged from mild distaste to “actively hurled across the room”. Not because the book was objectively bad — in fact, they were usually quite good — but because they weren’t for me. Other folks would likely love the hell out of them and I’ve made a point of recommending those books to people I thought would dig ’em. Because as a wise woman once said: “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”

Sometimes the issue is finding the right audience.

Now maybe the problem is that yes, you’re just there. I don’t think it is — more on that in a second — but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this is the problem. This is actually fairly common. One of the biggest issues a lot of folks have is that they’re afraid to stand out or to be polarizing. There’s a lot of “talk less/ smile more/ never let them know what you’re against or what you’re for” out there — folks who want to avoid being controversial so badly that they become the human incarnation of Applebee’s: blandly acceptable but not actually exciting. Very few people get a craving to go to Applebees. But this is a very fixable problem; it means letting go of being blandly acceptable. You have to be willing to worry less about being broadly appealing and more about being unapologetically yourself. You need to lean into the quirks and foibles that make you unique, even if they might mean that you’re not as broadly but blandly appealing… or at least, untroublesome.

While the idea of leaning into things you worry might make you less palatable to the general public can be scary, it’s actually a smart thing to do. This makes it much easier to actually find the people who are looking for folks like you and who crave what you’ve got. Sometimes the issue is that you’re trying to market to a broad audience when what you need to do is find your niche instead.

By the same token, the idea of “write what you know” isn’t accurate; I mean, I don’t think Scalzi’s got much experience being a rejuvenated pensioner who’s fighting an intergalactic war, nor do I think NK Jemisin has spent time as the living incarnation of Brooklyn.

(I could be wrong about that last one…)

It’s less “write what you know” and more “write what you can learn“. If all writing was based exclusively on people’s lived experiences, we wouldn’t have 90% of the literature or pop culture we have today. And the “what you learn” point is important because of how it applies to your life as well. You assume that part of your problem is a lack of experiences to draw from or to make you interesting… well, it seems like the answer is pretty simple: go get more experiences. You don’t need to be jetting off to exotic locales or joining the Peace Corps, but going out and doing new things — different things — is well within your reach. When’s the last time you’ve gotten out of your comfort zone and done something new, unexpected or different, just for the sake of doing it? When have you gone out and just decided to take risks or do things for the sake of the story you’d be able to tell afterwards?

From the sounds of things, not very often. It sounds like a lot of what’s been going on has been “running as fast as you can to stay in the same place”, rather than shaking things up and doing things differently. There’s a whole lot of “why bother?” in your letter, and that leads me to suspect that a lot of how you’ve tried to change or fix things has been “Do the same thing but HARDER this time” and wondering why you’re getting the same results. Definitions of insanity and all that.

But that’s actually a core issue regarding the trouble you’ve been having. Because, if I’m being perfectly honest, it sounds like you spend a lot of time rationalizing why you can’t (or rather, won’t) change. You’ve invested pretty heavily in the idea that you’re a milquetoast personality, and you’ve been actively resisting change. Case in point: “And it can’t just be my self-perception, because everything I’ve ever read about internal validation just sets off my red flag detector for being mental gymnastics or magical thinking.” I mean, dude. You’re a writer. I’m sure you’re aware of the concept of the unreliable narrator, right? The fact that something “sets off your red flag detector” doesn’t automatically mean that it’s wrong… not when your detector is seriously miscalibrated. This is less about your being able to change and being willing to accept that you might be wrong. 

Case in point: “I only ever had one long-term relationship anyway, and that started as a fluke, and ended because I never truly believed that she could be in love with me despite her saying so.” This right here? This is the precise example of what I’m talking about. Someone who was telling you, repeatedly, that she loved you and cared for you and you called her a liar. That wasn’t about you having a boring personality, that was about you being invested that people couldn’t like you and not allowing that maybe you are wrong. That investment and determination to not see everything that contradicts your belief is the literal definition of confirmation bias.

And that definitely makes it sound like the rest of your issues — like the idea that you’re just too uninteresting for people to find attractive — are equally untrue.

This is why it sounds like there’re other issues bubbling under the surface, ones that can’t be solved by a dating advice column. In addition to the changes I’ve suggested, I think it wouldn’t hurt you to take a little time and get some sessions with a counselor or therapist to see if you can both unpack a little about why you won’t accept the possibility that you might be wrong — that not only are you deserving of love, but that other people do find you interesting and desirable. That it’s not a matter of needing to earn enough Writer Points or what-have-you for folks to see that you’ve “got it” (whatever “it” is) in this case. Or that people getting married or having families means that they won’t have time for their friends.

Start working on getting your head and heart more in alignment and I think you’ll notice a significant improvement in your life. And in the meantime: go out and have some adventures, just for the f--k of it all.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Recently my brother and I got into an argument. I was talking about the new Zack Snyder’s Netflix film Army of the Dead and my brother mentioned he did not like said director. When I asked why he brought up that the YouTube channel Geeks and Gamers had done a stream where Zack had denounced them as “nazis” — those were my brothers words.

I stated as long as they had nothing to do with GamerGate then fair enough, whereupon my brother stated all the fallacies involved with it, basically blaming the women who got threatened and doxxed. I was trying to just avoid an argument when he then mentioned he did not like the term “incel” as that was what some of the people in GamerGate were being called.

The thing is that my brother is basically one.

To go back a ways, he has always not had any friends, even when he was young. In fact, after leaving school, I can’t think of a time he spent time with other people, and he’s had barely any female company. We live in the UK, and since he doesn’t work, he’s drawing benefits. He spends all day on his laptop watching YouTube videos. Has always been socially awkward, given that he is on the autism spectrum and he can’t regulate his emotions. 

He was what I’d call a social hand grenade; I’ve had him come out with me and my friends a few times, and it ended up him throwing a tantrum over something, making me look bad then having to get him out of the situation.

It doesn’t end there as any conversation I have with him — usually films or tv programs — ends up with him saying he doesn’t like the people involved with said films or tv shows due to their ” liberal lefty” politics. Now I just try not to talk to him anymore, which is a problem as, due to the pandemic, he lives with me .

I know it sounds awful, but he is my brother and I love him… though I am getting to the end of my tether with him. How do I talk to him or change his mind? I’d just like to look on life more positively.

Thanks

A Brother at the End of His Tether

DEAR A BROTHER AT THE END OF HIS TETHER: You’re a really good brother, ABEHT, and I can imagine how frustrating this must be.

So, there’re two issues at play here. The first is that your brother is basically self-radicalizing. This has been an ongoing issue for a while, but this has started coming to a head in the last few years; people have been watching friends, family members, even romantic partners going from being reasonable, sensible individuals to alt-right, reality-denying s--theads, seemingly overnight. The algorithms that drive Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are almost perfectly designed to drown users in increasingly vitriolic and extreme content — content produced by hate groups and also by right-wing grifters who are happy to cater to the audience.

One of the joking-but-not-really comments about YouTube is that it doesn’t matter what you click on, you’re only two or three recommended videos away from content from Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and other alt-lite gateways towards radicalization. This is especially true if you are even tangentially interested in traditionally “geeky” interests like video games or superhero movies. Channels like Geeks and Gamers, streamers like Ethan Van Scriver, even lawyers like Ty Beard have latched onto geek communities and stoked anger and resentment — primarily about women and minorities — in order to soak their viewers for cash and clout. As long as they can keep convincing their audience that The Enemy (again, women, people of color, LGBTQ folks) are Coming For Your Stuff, they’re able to continue milking them for GoFundMes, superchat and Twitch donations and Patreon subscriptions.

It’s significant that you mention GamerGate; GamerGate was, quite literally, the test market for this approach. Folks like Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, Andrew Breitbart and others latched onto GamerGate in order to both radicalize them to the alt-right but make them useful idiots in support of Trump and literal neo-Nazis. But Trump’s fan-club haven’t been the only folks who’ve been stoking the fires of geeks in order to get them riled up and on their side; white supremacist groups have been infiltrating geek communities in order to recruit angry, isolated young men. Brandon Hole, who killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, was a Brony, for example, and the Brony community has been facing a Nazi problem for years. Vox Day, another avowed white supremacist, has been deeply involved with the ComicsGate community, using it both as a source for revenue but for spreading his ideology.

Incidentally, if you want to know more about how the alt-right and white supremacist groups infiltrate online subcultures to recruit people, I highly recommend Talia Levin’s “Cultural Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy”.

The issue at hand is that on social media — whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok or what-have-you — you’re not the audience; you’re the product. These sites want to keep their users on their sites for as long as possible, so as to show ads and collect your user data. The longer you’re on YouTube, for example, the more videos it can show you… and the more ads it can serve up. Your behavior likewise gets harvested in order to further refine the algorithms that they use to entice you to stay. Facebook, likewise, wants you to stay on Facebook to the exclusion of damn near anything else and uses algorithms to decide what you do and don’t see.

The way that they measure the success of the material they show you is via engagement — how much do you interact with the posts or videos that you see? Do you spend more time in this group or that one? Do you watch these videos most of the way through, and peace out sooner rather than later? Do you comment and like, share and subscribe and — importantly — watch the next video in your recommendations?

Because these social media juggernauts prioritize engagement, they end up prioritizing increasingly extreme content… content that is much more likely to get a response out of the audience. And that makes sense; after all, look at how much hue and cry there was over The Snyder Cut or the way that right-wingers lost their goddamn minds over Brie Larsen in Captain Marvel or Gina Carano getting kicked off The Mandalorian for being s--tty about LGBTQ people. That gets people angry, right-wingers subscribe and share it, left-wingers share it to dunk on it, people make response videos and so on.

This is the bread and butter for right-wing reactionary groups. Channels like Geek and Gamers produce content that’s designed to get people riled up — either with anger at the supposed SJWs who’re coming for their stuff, or to provoke responses from people who want to yell at them in comments and dunk on their rather weak commentary. Self-proclaimed “gurus” promise occult knowledge, whether it’s the cancer cure that “they” don’t want you to know about or how to interpret the verbal diarrhea on 8kun to learn more about the secret Satanic cabal that’s eating your babies and using imaginary drugs.

One of the unfortunate effects that comes when you have been mainlining this much hate is that… well, some of it tends to sink in. It’s a quirk of the human psyche that if somebody hears something often enough — especially if it’s said confidently enough — then you’re that much more likely to take it in. If you’ve ever heard a song on the radio that you hate at first, but keep hearing it over and over until you have to admit to yourself that it kinda slaps, then you’ve experienced this first hand.

And to make matters worse, groups like this will especially insist that you can’t listen to or trust people who disagree; they are already preying on a frequently isolated and lonely demographic, and focus on emphasizing that their isolation is the fault of others. They are the only ones who will understand you or respect you or who get what you’re going through. They are the only ones who you can rely on. Everyone else just doesn’t get it… or worse, is actively laughing at you.

I’m sure you can see how enticing this can be to a young man who’s already mostly housebound, with few to no friends or relationships outside of immediate family.

Which brings us to the second problem: your brother’s isolation. You mention that he’s autistic and has issues with things like emotional regulation, which makes it harder for him to be social. I have to wonder if part of the reason why he’s a “social hand grenade” as you put it is because of how overwhelming things can be for an autistic person. A lot of times, what can look like an autistic person having a fit or throwing a tantrum is actually a meltdown — an intense response, often to the point of losing control, to being sensory or emotional overload.

(Just for the record: after a fair amount of research, I’m still not entirely sure if meltdown is the accepted term or if it’s considered insulting by autistic people. It’s currently in use in most of the medical and psychological literature I consulted, but I’ll edit this if I’m wrong.)

That tantrum you mention that he threw when you took him out with friends might well have been less a tantrum and more a reaction to overwhelming sensory input or anxiety. If you took him to the pub with your friends, the noise, the lights, the crowds, even the smoke or just plain social anxiety could have been too much for him and triggered this.  And I want to be clear: you were trying to help him as best you could, and you were coming to this with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, you may have inadvertently put him in a situation that would’ve been a living nightmare for an autistic person.

Trying to socialize the way you or other allistic people do may not be feasible for your brother, at least not right now. I’m not surprised he’s become so isolated. It can be hard for folks like your brother to navigate a world that can be hostile to autistic people, especially considering how many therapies for autistic folks are unhelpful at best or torture at worst.

But that same isolation is not only what makes him a prime target for right-wing s--theads and the incel community, but also what makes it harder for him to leave those groups. One of the ways that people leave the incel community, for example, is by going out and interacting with the world, getting to know people as people, instead of the one-dimensional fictions that get tossed around on the boards. It’s much harder to buy into the idea of Chads and Stacies — or predatory trans people or vitriolic SJWs or whatever other boogiemen are being propped up as The Enemy — when you actually talk to them, hang out with them and get to know them.

So what do you do to help your brother?

Well if I’m perfectly honest, the best first step would be cutting off the source if at all possible. For all that during the election, people joked about visiting their older relatives and using the parental controls on TVs to block Fox News, OANN and the like… that’s actually not a bad idea in and of itself.

That having been said: it sounds like your brother is a legal adult and, while he has issues regarding emotional regulation and can’t hold down a job, he’s hardly intellectually disabled. As such, I’m really hesitant to seriously suggest muting or blocking channels. Yes, limiting access to GamerGate, ComicsGate and other right-wing associated channels on YouTube would go a long way towards changing things… but you’re also not his caregiver or legal guardian. Making decisions about what another adult is or isn’t allowed to watch on their own gets into seriously dicey territory and frankly I’m not comfortable saying that this is a viable option.

However, leaving the question of blocking those channels aside, limiting the time he spends watching them is a good idea, especially if you can provide alternative options. Helping him find other ways to occupy his time would be ideal. Part of the reason why he’s spending all of his time on YouTube is because he’s so isolated and stays at home. By helping get him out in the world — in ways that are less traumatizing or overwhelming to him — you take up time that he would spend on his laptop or tablet. When you’re not constantly drowning in s--t and have a few moments to think that aren’t dominated by Ethan Van Scriver yelling about Kelly Marie Tran, then you’re much more likely start to step away from it. After all, part of what these groups rely on is constant reinforcement. Cutting off that reinforcement gives you an opportunity to push back against the toxic ideas they’ve been spreading.

One of the best things you could do, especially if you want to help him socialize, would be to find local support groups for autistic people — ones who actually have autistic people running them, not just groups like Autism Speaks. These organizations can be a great resource for working on being more social and being able to go out and about and handle potential overwhelming situations… without resorting to things like ABA therapy.

Helping him find and build a social circle — one that isn’t predicated on online groups — will help ease his isolation, help build a sense of connection and community and drain some of the anger and resentment that these groups rely on.

(And for my readers: if you’re autistic, especially you reside in the the UK, I want to invite you to share your advice, experiences and resources in the comments.)

The next step is to engage with your brother a bit more. Right now, you avoid talking to him about much because it always ends in fights about so and so’s “lefty” politics… but that’s actually an opportunity to start to break the hold that these groups have on him. The mistake that a lot of folks make when dealing with people that they’re trying to convince is that they come at the conversation from a place of “I’m right, you’re wrong and you’re an idiot for believing in this, now let me correct you.” What’s far more effective is to start by building rapport with the person you’re trying to persuade. Coming to it from a place of “we’re both intelligent, reasonable people, we both have valuable and important insights” means that the person you’re trying to persuade is far less likely immediately put up their shields. By starting from there and asking your brother to explain, in his own words, just what he means, you’re in a better position to start to affect change.

The key here is to realize that you aren’t going to change their mind by debate; arguing with someone just tends to make them double down on what they already believe. What you’re looking to do is gently encourage him to notice the flaws in his own logic and arguments. Asking him to explain, saying things like “wait, but if that’s the case, then why…” or “what would they get out of this?” may get him going in Patrick-Starfish-esque circles, but it means that it’s much easier to plant seeds of doubt. Those seeds may not bloom right away — that takes time — but they do help create moments where he may start to question some of the assumptions and beliefs he’s bought into.

You can’t force someone to change their mind, nor can you reason them out of it. But by getting them to question their own beliefs, you help them change their own minds.

Finally, as you’re asking him to explain his beliefs or positions, offer some alternatives. Having counter-examples and counter-arguments can be incredibly helpful for shifting people away from groups like the incel community or the alt-right… especially if they can provide an example of someone who’s supposedly a “liberal lefty” but isn’t the stereotype they’re told to believe in. And since it’s helpful to do so in their own language, so to speak, then focusing on YouTubers can be a good starting point.

While I’m not big on a lot of “breadtube”, there’re certain YouTubers who I’ve found have been very good at breaking down arguments and false narratives in ways that even folks who’re coming into this skeptically can accept. Natalie Wynn — who records videos as ContraPoints — is very good at debunking common right-wing talking points and beliefs. Her videos on incels and masculinity, for example, have been incredibly good at pulling people back from the brink. I’d also recommend The 1 Janitor, Shaun and BigJoel as folks who are great at discussing and debunking alt-right arguments without talking down or putting people immediately on the defensive.

This is an area where “we both are reasonable people” can come in handy; telling your brother that hey, you listened to him, now it’s only fair that he listens to you can help make easier for you to get him to watch the videos. In fact, offering to watch them together may help.

Now again, I have to stress: this is a slow and gradual process, one that can take a lot of time to encourage him to change. And I’m going to be honest: sometimes that change never comes. Some people will cling to their isolation and hate, for a lot of reasons, including out of a sense of shame or fear. But the fact that you clearly love and care for your brother will hopefully help make it easier for you to at least plant those seeds and guide him towards changing for the better.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com